EVENING SHADE:
After graduating from Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training in 1986, I felt so blessed to get a great education from Mr. Reynolds and a wonderful opportunity to see how hard and yet how much fun the business could be. Afterwards I saw many of my peers get the call from Mr. Reynolds to appear in his many shows and movies and although I was very happy for them, I wondered if I would ever get the call. I questioned myself. Was I not good enough? Did he not like me? Mind tricks happen all of the time in the industry and the best thing one can do is be prepared like a reliever on a baseball team. Just keep the faith and be ready to go if and when the coach would call your number. One day during the first season of Evening Shade I received a call to audition for a role. I nailed it and was cast. My scene was with Burt and in the rehearsal I played a jerk reporter but started as Mr. nice guy to gain his trust and then turn on him. Burt liked it. We shot it – I was so grateful to be there and Burt kept me on as a production assistant. Now I have a full time job. While doing that I was still writing, acting and running Charles Nelson Reilly’s school. Burt’s assistant and my good friend Pepper Sweeney left to do a tv series so I received another call from Burt. I was moved up as his personal assistant. For 2 seasons I was Mr. Reynolds right hand man. My job responsibilities were to go over lines with him, play his role while he directed which was so cool to learn from him but it also allowed me to act with some of the best actors of all time on a weekly basis. I would even perform in front of the networks and kiss Marilu Henner and play her virtual husband. Look, somebody had to do it. LOL. I would go to high level meetings with Burt, learn from him, edit with him, go to party’s with him and work along side some of the biggest stars in Hollywood thanks to him. It was truly amazing! AMAZING! He would also cast me for a role every year. I was his right hand man when he won the Emmy and Golden Globe award! But doing television is very different than movies. The writers work countless hours on the scripts to establish relationships and arcs that many of the cast is not privy to, so saying the words as written is important. In a way to satisfy them Burt (a team player) purchased an audio devise that would allow me to feed him his lines prior to saying them. It was if I was the offensive coordinator and he was the quarterback. Our system was while the actor spoke I would feed Burt his next line and he would deliver. Burt knew his lines but had this as a safety to honor them. If for some reason he didn’t hear me he would squeeze his nose and I would feed him again. We did this for a while and nobody knew about it. One time Marilu Henner and Burt had a scene and I turned the page and fed Burt his line and he delivered. Marilu looked at him perplexed and he knew it so he grabbed his nose and I gave him the line again and he delivered perfectly. Then Marilu pointed out that we skipped a page. He looked at me, smiled and called me a putz and everyone laughed. Burt taught me so much, introduced me to so many people. I would literally be with him in the editing room till 3 am. in the morning and be ready for work the next day and it was true labor of love. Burt optioned a movie I co-wrote with my best friend Rich Petrofsky called “THE BLUE CREW” about the first female umpire to make it to the majors. Tom Mount former President of Universal Studios was also a producer. Burt then heard about The Right To Remain Silent and asked us to do it at his theatre and we did. Because that was successful he asked Brent and I to rewrite his CBS movie “THE MAN FROM LEFT FIELD” while we were writing that movie he said if you can get me an Evening Shade episode by tomorrow he thinks he could hire us to write for Evening Shade. Brent and I pulled an all nighter and did it. Burt gave us our break into the WGA and now we were writers on a top 10 television series. He also asked me to write his Florida Orange Juice and Quaker State Commercials. Burt had a baby shower for my wife at his house, gave us furniture, gifts, souvenirs and opportunities galore. 2 episodes we wrote have interesting back-stories. The first episode was meant for Billy Bob Thornton to bring back a character he created earlier. Billy Bob loved the script but couldn’t do it because of Hearts Afire. So Burt was able to get Jerry Reed to do it. Jerry was great! The network read through was the best one I had seen in 4 years and it was confirmed to me by the network that they felt the same. Burt is one of the best reactors I have ever seen – he is a great point guard that allows actors around him to score big time because of his unselfish nature and his astute understanding of comedy. The laughs were so loud for Jerry and the people around Burt (who was the lead), but I respectfully think Burt felt he wasn’t landing and wanted changes to the script, but without his reaction it wouldn’t be funny. He was the one who sold it. He made it work. But he was the boss so all of the writers changed the script, but for whatever reason it never came close to the reading. On another episode, Burt wanted to service our young actor on the show, and the little people who were stand-ins for him for an episode. The writers told Brent and I to write it and we did. Kathie Lee Gifford did the episode for us and was a delight. Very kind. There was a wrestling element to the show and the little person pushed Burt over a couch and to the floor and during the filming Burt hit the deck and popped up and calmly looked at me and said, “I just broke my arm.” And he did. He kept acting throughout the night with a broken arm. A few weeks later Burt was in a cast and he took me with him to Wrestlemania 10 knowing I was a fan and would serve as his assistant. While there I pitched an idea to the Vice President of the WWF now WWE and former Champion Bob Backlund as to why Bob Backlund should turn bad … you could tell they both liked it. They brought it to Vince McMahon and tried it and it was a hit. People hated Backlund and brought him to the top again as he won the WWF championship again. The bit worked so well, Vince flew me to Stamford and I had dinner with him and his wife at his house and then went on the road for them for a week to see how it worked. If I chose that world (which I liked) I would have never been home and seen my family, but again – what an experience – what a cool thing to be a part of WWE history all because of Burt Reynolds. Burt is so selfless and kind while writing for the show he contacted Steven Speilberg about assuring him that I could act on Seaquest while writing for Evening Shade. Speilbergs Co-Executive Producer was another apprentice for Burt, Tommy Thompson. Bill Clinton would come to the set and often contact us to punch up jokes it was an amazing who’s who on our set daily. I have a million stories to tell but that is just a glimpse …
Mr. Reynolds is my teacher, mentor, and friend and our relationship has spanned over 4 decades of genuine love and loyalty. When I questioned whether as an apprentice I would ever get the call from Coach Reynolds, as fate would have it, I was blessed to play for him longer than anyone else and I am honored. Several years ago he came to Marion Indiana to star in a show I wrote for him and several other apprentices came as we honored him in a sold out 1,400 seat house. I had police escorts, a private jet (thanks to my friend John Boyle) for him and we treated Burt with the class he deserved to be treated with. There have been a lot of great people in my life and great helpers like Billy Bob Thornton, Dom Deluise, Charles Nelson Reilly, Tommy Thompson and Bill Bindley, but nobody has done more for my career than Burt Reynolds. I love Burt Reynolds!